Prior Art Statement
Body brushes incorporated in shower stalls have been known for many, many years. Roberts U.S. Pat. No. 3,091,776, for example, discloses a rotary shower brush in which a pair of brushes are driven through a pair of clutches and in which a soap or other liquid additive is pumped in a mixer of water to the brush. There, relatively small diameter brushes were rotated at speeds in range of 25 to 500 rpm. In Tharp U.S. Pat. No. 4,008,503, the brush used a spiral ring of stiff bristles for massaging purposes and the entire assembly was mounted on a rack and frame for adjusting the height thereof. In Brunette U.S. Pat. No. 3,862,459, a scrubber and massager apparatus is disclosed in which the unit could be adapted to a shower stall or bathing enclosure. In Walker U.S. Pat. No. 4,417,362, the device was a completely stationary unit which the user provided the action or movement against the brushes or bristles and a sponge for washing or cleaning inaccessible parts of the body. In Holland U.S. Pat. No. 2,657,685, the mechanical body massager had a plurality of flaps or slapping elements made from rubber or the like which slapped and massaged the body as the shaft rotated. In Perry U.S. Pat. No. 3,196,867, a plurality of brushes were provided in a body massaging and scrubbing appliance in which a gear train was utilized to rotate the adjacent brushes in different rotary directions so that adjacent brushes would be rotated in unison but have their cylindrical surfaces moving away from each other so as to contact the back of the person and tend to spread the skin of the person along an elongated area while the brushes were rotating while adjacent brushes were rotated towards each other so as to tend to draw the skin together along a line. Finally, in Mishelle U.S. Pat. No. 2,068,757, a turbine drive driven by water coming into the shower is used to drive the rotary brush.
These prior art body brush-type systems require spaced pairs of mounting bearings for the brush making it difficult to change or service the brush, and they generally use relatively stiff bristle brushes, e.g., bristles which are relatively horizontal when the brush is stationary. Moreover, these apparently have not found any commercial success.
The object of the present invention is to provide an improved body brush and shower stall which is simple, reliable, and provides superior performance at reasonable low cost.
According to the present invention, a body brush is mounted on a vertical drive shaft having a single bearing for rotatably supporting the brush at its lower end with the weight of the brush serving to provide the friction loading necessary on a unique built-in fail-safe clutch mechanism which is driven from a gear box which, in turn, is driven by an electric motor. The gear box is designed so as to drive the brush at a rotary speed of from about 90 rpm to about 120 rpm. In this preferred embodiment, the body brush has relatively soft flexible bristles which hang and droop downwardly at speeds below 90 rpm but which extend substantially horizontally when rotated at speeds above about 90 rpm. In the present embodiment, the bristles may be about 12 inches long and reach a substantially horizontally extended position when the brush is rotated at about 100 rpm. Brushes of the type used in automatic car wash systems are highly suitable for use in this invention. A vertical spray bar is provided to spray, at all times that the brush is rotating, a lubricating medium such as water, but preferably water in a mixture with one or more of a liquid soap, body lotion, body oil, or a rinse additive which may be selectively controlled by low voltage solenoids and injected through a venturi injection system into mixture with the water. One or more check valves prevent any of the additives from being drawn back or fed back into the water supply.
In the preferred embodiment, the brush drive includes a unique clutch construction which, in a preferred embodiment, depends upon the weight of the brush assembly to provide sufficient loading force on a friction clutch disk to rotate the brush and includes a shaft portion projecting into the interior of the brush roller to assure stability and verticality of the brush when the body or a portion of the user bears or presses against the brush bristles. The drive shaft for the clutch mechanism is electrically insulated from the gear box assembly by a Teflon.TM. insulating coupling. A pair of sprockets are provided, one of which is secured by a taper-lock bushing to the lower end of the brush drive shaft and the other of which is secured by a similar taper-lock bushing to the upper end of the drive shaft from the gear box. A Teflon.TM. chain engages both sprockets to couple the sprockets and insulate the brush mounting structure from the gear box and motor shafts. A flat disk nylon washer is positioned between the ends of the two shafts to make certain that the two shafts do not ever make electrical contact. Furthermore, the electrical drive motor is of the type which has been insulated to assure safe operation in this particular environment.
A shower stall incorporating the invention is provided with an elongated back wall and two end walls and a pair of short front walls which provide an entranceway with the outer vertical edges of the two front walls being integrally molded to the vertical edges of the two end walls and, with the back wall, form two-three wall chambers (1) a brush chamber for the rotary brush to thereby reduce the tendency of water and other fluids from being thrown outwardly by centrifugal force toward the entranceway and (2) a seat chamber for the bather to sit and place his or her feet in the brush for massaging, cleaning, etc. purposes, as well as to sit while bathing in the shower.
Thus, the invention provides a body brush apparatus and shower stall which is simple, reliable and provides superior performance over the prior art.